Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1114117
10 OPINION maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 8 MAY 2019 I am beginning to detect wor- rying levels of delusion in Mal- tese politics today. Look, for instance, at how much of our political discourse is still rooted in an archaic, non-represent- ative (and, in any case, almost extinct) 'two-party system'. Billboards pointing fingers at each other, like kids on a play- ground; 'debates' which still in- vite only Labour and PN, to the exclusion of all minority voices; a media landscape which ap- pears far more comfortable talking about the realities of yesteryear, than about what's happening today… Yet everything that is hap- pening today points squarely towards the disintegration of Malta's traditional 'two-party' system. One of those two par- ties has gone and eviscerated itself over the last 10 years: and the other has simply morphed into what the Nationalist Party used to be, when it enjoyed a quasi-unassailable grip on pow- er in this country for almost a quarter of a century. How is that a 'two-party sys- tem'? I see a 'one-party system', myself. You could have as many 20 million parties contesting an election… but if they're all going to prove identical once in power, then we can't talk about a multiplicity of political ideas, can we? And besides: we couldn't realistically talk about an 'electoral choice', even at a time when there really were two parties to choose from: let alone today, when there is al- most literally 'only one'. But even before that started to became visible, there was another problem with the old system staring us all in the face. It's an easy problem to recog- nize – you can all see it, many of you have complained about it before – but it's a little hard to define in just a few words. By its own nature, a two-party system cannot be representa- tive of the full gamut of na- tional concerns. Malta is now a country of well over half a million people. The days when that population was largely ho- mogenous – all Christian, all white, all moulded by the same educational system, all exposed to the same media influences; all neatly categorisable into 'ha- malli' and 'puliti', etc. that's all gone now. Finished. History. Those are simply not generali- sations that can realistically be made any more, without com- ing across as lamentably out of touch. Meanwhile, any number of specific political niches have arisen… too many to be com- fortably 'represented' by the policies of only two parties, which are in any case both de- pendent on the same financial power-structures for their own survival… making it inevitable that they will end up converg- ing on practically everything anyway. The environment? There has been no policy difference be- tween Labour and PN on that score since… forever, really. Both are deep in the pockets of developers; both are there- fore incapable of conceiving of a policy-platform that is not based only on construction projects. So even if one of those two parties was not bleeding to death before our very eyes… we all know that 'voting in the Op- position' would make no differ- ence whatsoever to that status quo. Only the face representing the (not-so) hidden power behind the throne would change; and even then, not by very much. The hidden power would re- main the same. The net result is that - aside from being largely indistin- guishable from one another anyway – both parties have also gravitated towards the dead- centre of the political spectrum. And as a certain William But- ler Yeats once put it: "the cen- tre cannot hold". "Things fall apart", he said. "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world", he added. And guess what? He could very easily have been talking about Malta's political system (indeed, I have seen that quote applied specifically to the context of America's two-party system, which resembles ours on the surface). From their comfortable po- sition at the nice, safe and squeaky clean political centre… political parties cannot gauge popular concerns on the dark and dangerous periphery. Just as Yeats' "falcon cannot hear the falconer"… Labour and PN cannot address niche politi- cal concerns which lie beyond their political reach. And it's when those unreachable con- cerns reach crisis proportions, that the true failure of the sys- tem becomes manifest. That's when 'things' literally do 'fall apart'. In the fullness of time, that could only ever lead to the eventual collapse of the two- party system. Inevitably, an is- sue would arise where people feel strongly enough to rebel against the tacit complicity that renders both parties incapable of confronting it. Sadly, that is- sue did not take the form of 'the environment'. Instead, it took the form of immigration. Hence the political delusion I referred to earlier. Last Sunday, MaltaToday published a poll in which, for the first time ever, Norman Lowell's Imperium Europa registered on the charts. It came in at number three af- ter the two main parties; which also means that – just like that, out of nowhere – Imperium Europa shot past both Altern- attiva Demokratika and Partit Demokratiku, to become Mal- ta's official 'third party'. And Norman Lowell's Imperi- um Europa is a Nazi party. Not just a 'far right/anti-immigra- tion' party', like Alleanza Bidla; nor (even less) a Conservative Christian movement like 'River of Love'. It is a party modelled directly on Adolf Hitler's 1930s 'white/Aryan supremacy' ideas: i.e., that black people, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the disa- bled, etc., are all 'non-human', and therefore can be conveni- ently exterminated at will. Noman Lowell himself has advocated mass-murder on nu- merous occasions. (To be fair, he was also prosecuted on at least one of those occasions). He proposed using the AFM patrol boats to sink immigrant boats at sea; he even advocat- ed public lynching of 'traitors' ('We will hang them from the lampposts', etc.) on live TV. And he is now officially Mal- ta's third most powerful politi- cal voice. Now: in case I am misunder- stood, I am not pointing all this out to make a public display of my (admittedly genuine) dis- tress at this turn of events. Nor even to try and influence vot- ers. I acknowledge that Nor- man Lowell exists, and has to be regarded as part of the po- litical landscape. I can even un- derstand the frustrations that drive people to vote for him, or others like him. And yes, I can see that is happening all over Europe and elsewhere, too. But that is precisely what dis- turbs me in all this. It is not just the spike in support for Imperi- um Europa, in and of itself. It is the reaction from the rest of the political (and media) circuit. Almost instantaneously, this phenomenon was dismissed as… a 'protest vote'. It is as though any variation from the traditionally 'two-party system' – even now, that it no longer exists – is automatically inter- preted as a minor 'blip' that will set itself right in due course. The general sensation seems to be: "They're saying they'll vote Norman Lowell, for now… but that's just to send a message to the two parties. You'll see, they'll all come running back to the fold with their tails between their legs… they always do…" No, damn it. No, no, no. That is part of the 'homogeneity' I talked about earlier, and which is now history. If Lowell's support can be extrapolated at roughly 10,000 – and we'll know soon enough – those are not 10,000 people who are 'fed up of the two parties'. Those are 10,000 Nazis. They are 10,000 people who applaud Hitler for killing millions of Jews in the 1940s; and who approve of drive-by shootings of black peo- ple on Maltese roads in 2019 (in case no one' s noticed, there've been two so far already). And they will certainly not 'come back with their tails between their legs'. If they come back at all, it will be to smash win- dows and kick in doors, in true 'Kristallnacht' fashion. And this can be asserted with 100% certainty, because Nor- man Lowell is not the only far right candidate on the ballot sheet. If his support really were just a 'protest vote'… part of that vote, at least, would have gone to the aforementioned Alleanza Bidla/Moviment Patrijotti Maltin, or to an inde- pendent candidate like Stephen Florian. The 'respectable' faces of the far right would have ben- efitted from the fall-out, too. But no. The vote went only to the most extreme, radical and undisguisedly homicidal ver- sion of the Far Right. The one that actively proposes killing migrants in the streets. To dismiss that reality as a 'protest vote' – and even then, because you are simply inca- pable of extricating yourself from an outdated, obsolete po- litical template - is to literally sleepwalk into Fascism. It is to invite Fascism in through the front door, for a cup of tea and biscuits. And – let's face it – if Europe responded in the same way to the rise of Fascism in the 1920s and 1930s… I probably wouldn't be here writing this, and you probably wouldn't be there reading it. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of it all, however, is that it will probably have to take something truly drastic to shake people here out of their som- nambulist stupor. How many armed Nazis do you think it would take to successfully over- throw the government of Malta in military coup? I reckon a lot less than 10,000, myself. And if that example is too drastic for you… how many Nazis does it take to hang a migrant (or a traitor) from a lamppost? Or to pull the trigger of a gun? But hey! Nothing to get all panicky about, is there? It's just a minor 'blip' that will soon it- self right… Sigh. Something tells me that 'things' here will have to really 'fall apart'… that 'mere anarchy' will really have to be 'loosed upon the world'… before we all finally get it into our heads that this… is not… a 'protest vote'. Raphael Vassallo The rise of Nazism is not a 'protest vote' Malta is now a country of well over half a million people. The days when that population was largely homogenous – all Christian, all white, all moulded by the same educational system, all exposed to the same media influences; all neatly categorisable into 'hamalli' and 'puliti', etc.… that's all gone now